Living Between the Worlds

Entries tagged with fortunate isle

I was born near a small village between Cape Wrath on the Coast of Scotland, and the Highlands, deep within those ancient lands that had been held since time immemorial by Clan MacKay. I was born the daughter of a devoted Priestess of the Great Mother Goddess, the Mother of all Fortune and Magic, and my father was an Unseelie Sidhe nobleman. I was born in the times when Mankind and Fae lived in peace.

Shortly after I was born, my mother took me to the Fortunate Island, where she had served the High Lady, Morgienne. I was still a babe at the breast when she died. Morgienne raised me as her own daughter, and I grew up on this strange island where all women upon it know all of the magic in the whole of the world of humans, and a good portion of that magic that is used within the Fae realms as well.

It is a beautiful Island with lakes and mountains, rounded by deep meadows, and orchards of apples, peaches, mangoes and every manner of fruit that has delighted the world since the beginning of time. No hail, nor torrential rain nor snow has e’er fallen upon the Fortunate Island. The wooded groves and deep forests know every manner of magical and healing herb, and plenty is the only order that there can possibly be. There are marble shrines and temples that dot the Island. Lazily stretching and shaded paths wind past the ornate and impressive structures, some of them feeding into the Island’s centre, and some meander toward the shores of the lakes or to the sea. My childhood was spent exploring every realm of this place. Every cave was a palace, every forest glade a fortress, and in my youngest imaginations, even then, I ruled as Queen.

My favorite tree on the entire island is the ancient mimosa that is large and gnarled. It’s branches and foliage that look like miniature palm fronds, are profusely interspersed with the pink feathery flowers that hold the essence of the most sacred perfume to our people. It would take nearly a hundred stone of flowers to produce one ounce of the sacred oil. I have a small blue bottle of the perfume that has lasted me nearly five hundred years. That tree was my very best friend, when at times I felt that I had none. Its spirit and mine are bonded as every priestess is bound to some totem animal or plant spirit. Even as a child I would sing to it, or play beneath it. At other times I would sleep nestled safely in its branches, as if the tree was a great and loving father, rooted in the rich yet sometimes rocky soil of the Fortunate Isle.

Somehow, over the course of my life, I have ne’er tired of living on an Island. I have gone to many islands. I have conquered them, been stranded upon them. I have been met by hostile natives on the beaches of still others, and yet, each one, in its own way, reminded me so vividly of the Island home where I grew up, and the one place that I will never forget.